mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

You can logically understand that Avery, Talbott and Christian, C & T Gordon, Carvin Johnson, and Jibreel Black - all of whom are true or RS freshmen - will benefit from another year of practice, film, and lifting. Demens is in his first (half) year of play. Herron and Fitzgerald have seen the field and will be seniors. Floyd, Roh, and Kovacs will be entering their 3rd year of significant playing time. RVB and Woolfork should be potential All-BT candidates/2nd team and Martin should be a lock.

There is every reason to believe the D will be better next year. No one is expecting tops in the B10. I'm expecting improvement to middle-to-back in FBS (50-75), with a chance to do better if the O puts pressure on opposing teams and causes them to change their gameplan.

And the O should be lights out. B/C they're all good and they're all back (minus Schilling)

The defense cannot stop anyone PERIOD...Someone has to be accountable and that person has to be the defensive coordinator. He has done a horrible job. For whatever reason GERG is not working out, grading talent, calling plays, developing players, etc.

We are in the old Catch 22 scenario. If we let Rich and staff go, we are doomed to at least 2-3 years of really crappy football, more decommits, more transfers and more bad press. If we keep Rich and staff (minusGERG), we could have a really good 2011, easier schedule, better offense and maybe an improved defense. Or we could have a repeat of this year.

I want to give Rich the benefit of the doubt. He is a good coach, who didn't forget how to coach once he hit the city limits. I am willing to wait one more year, no matter how painful the thoughts of repeating this in 2011 may be.

I would suggest Rich hire Whoopi Goldberg's character from Ghost and spend some time with Bo.

Unlike the OP, I think it is logical to argue that talent and experience, along with coaching, are problems. Those points seem to be axiomatic. The issue, that perhaps the OP is trying to point to, is saying that the problem is one or the other. And I think supporters of RR are beyond making a case for one or the other. My interest is, however, going beyond those immediate causes and looking for their causes - in other words, seeing coaching and talent/experience as effects.

It's shortsighted, and it short-shrifts the team, to stop just at experience and coaching. Those are effects of deeper causes, which I think are management and leadership. We need to ask, How is it that we find ourselves at this unprecedented place where talent/experience and coaching are so bad? Again, I think it is management and leadership. Examples include making better decisions in terms of staff, making better decisions in terms of coaching, not blaming players' lack of talent and experience, leading in a way that players will want to stay (Bo and Carr had some famous cases of players wanting to leave, but through leadership, those players stayed). I think that good management at the program level will make players more likely to stay, more likely to play their hearts out in your new system, more likely to come play for you - more likely you will land top recruits who do not also need to be marginal recruits (that other programs shy away from).

I see the more apparent problems as manifestations of more systemic, systematic problems in the management and leadership of the program. That is why I think it is more risky to stick with RR than it is to get another coach. You cannot use our ongoing transition, nor ND's, to predict how a new caoching transition will play out. That is selecting just according to failures or massively difficult transitions (our own). Those are anomalous cases. Rest assured we will never ever have another transition like the one we have seen. That is why this is so troubling to many of us - not that there is change, but that the process is only comparable to change processes that have failed. There is a reason that when we point to transition processes that went smoother than this one, those cases are also examples of transitions that were successful. Similarly, there is a reason that when we point to unsuccessful transitions, those all look like this one. Successful ones went better than ours went. Unsuccessful ones went about the same. You can argue that the unsuccessful ones were unsuccessful because they were cut short, but that is a weak place to be, predicting what would have been. All we have is what has been, and what might be.

I think that there is more of a chance that a new coach comes in, learns from our recent failure to transition, and makes a better go of it. I think that is more likely than RR turning the program around, given his lack of leadership and management ability.

don't we take a look at the situation from his point of view? 1). Why don't I have any juniors or seniors capable of starting on d? 2). Why are there no semi competent starters on d? 3). If my d was average or a little better then average we would be undefeated. 4). Why can't the arm chair coaches read the situation I was placed in, and recognize what steps I'm taking to remedy this situation? 5). After building a great winning program at WV why did I come to Michigan and listen to all this BS from people who know little to nothing about coaching college D1 football. 6). I didn't know there were so many fair weather fans an M.

I just wish people would shut up and let this program take its course to the winning tradition again!

Than anyone else did I not see how bad the defense would be in the future sooner and not spend all my "snake oil" scholarships on offensive players and not spend my first full recruiting class compensating so they'd at least be sophomores and not freshmen and wait till my year 3 recruiting class to fix it after realizing it was a problem after reading a blog diary?

And why didn't I recruit better players to fill in, and then keep them all?

I haven't seen a single person here say he/she is giving up college football. What I have seen is many people post that they are exasperated with our horrendous play in the Big Ten. RR is 4-16 in conference play. Literally no fanbase in the country would be pleased with that. It's probably the worst Big Ten winning percentage in school history. It is completely responable to be bothered by this.